Technical Literacy versus Critical Literacy in Adult Basic Education

The demands placed upon Adult Basic Education programs in the United States are more rigorous and involve more people than ever before in our history. Government-supported programs as well as private ones capture in microcosm the best and worst in American education. Literacy education is modeled along a continuum moving from a technical conception of literacy, wherein students mark progress by numbers of completed worksheets, to a conception of literacy as praxis, or critical literacy, wherein students construct meaning for themselves and effect change in their lives. These competing models are contrasted, and special emphasis is given to one adult basic literacy organization that is managing to humanize the process. In this program founded in 1973, the students' own words demonstrate the liberating nature of literacy learning that puts into practice the best of current understandings in the field. The challenge of the next decades demands a critical literacy that is consistent with participatory democracy. The convergence of social learning theories, process teaching, critical consciousness, and adult literacy offers constructive responses to the epidemic incidence of illiteracy in our society.